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07/27/2015

In the next post down, you can read me ravin' about Noah Purifoy, but there's a lot of other stuff going on to commend the LA County Museum of Art as a terrific way to spend a hot summer afternoon. You'll be hearing me talk about the Raven Jake Austerity Plan and how LACMA is helping us out: On weekdays, after 3 p.m. to museum has free admission for LA County residents.

At the moment you check in, make sure to ask for a reservation to see the James Turrell piece "Breathing Light." I guarantee you've never seen anything like it. If you go on a Friday, the museum is open til 8 and there's free jazz concerts. Grab a blanket, pack a picnic and you're all set for a romantic evening on the cheap.

Over there on the left, you'll see I'm standing very close to (but not touching) Duke Kahanamoku's surfboard. How cool is that? He rode goofy foot, just like me. It's part of their "best of" 50th anniversary show.

They also have all kinds of art from some hard-core Polynesian cannibal ritual artifacts to some European Renaissance to modern conceptual art and everything in between. Like photography? They've got that too. I'm pretty fond of a huge Richard Serra piece called Band. It's another one you've got to see to believe.

Y'all know from my previous posts that I'm a big Noah Purifoy fan. The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum is one of the finest conglomerations of assemblage art there is, hands down, so I was mighty curious to see how that could be translated from large-scale pieces in the California desert to an austere, interior white-walled museum setting. Disregard that orange wall over there, it's an anomaly.

Noah's work (I've got to call him Noah - I might not have known him personally, but I feel like he's an old friend) was inspired to a degree by Sam Rodia's master work, The Watts Towers, but his stuff is smaller, funnier, and more about social message than beauty. It has funk. It's dirty. It's about taking what society discards and making something meaningful out of it. You can't look at his art and not smile.

The LA County Museum of Art [LACMA] is hosting an exhibit of some of Noah's select work until Sept. 27, so jump on it while you can. They're calling it Junk Dada, which I guess is as good a term as any for his more surreal pieces. Over on the right, you can see that they left a dove's nest in one of the sculptures, which is a nice touch, and they also anchored the pieces with a sandy base that touches on their desert home. Other parts of the exhibit explore some wall-mounted items (calling them paintings or collages or quilts is a little too specific) plus some mention of his work in the Civil Rights Movement.

Now, you've heard me harp about the Raven Jake Austerity Plan (there's going to be a lot of that this summer - I've got me some beer tastes on a water budget) and here's how LACMA is helping us out: On weekdays, after 3 p.m. to museum has free admission for LA County residents. If you go on a Friday, the museum is open til 8 and there's free jazz concerts. Grab a blanket, pack a picnic and you're all set for a romantic evening on the cheap. You can thank Jake later [wink].

07/26/2015

Folks, I'm making a conscientious effort to go and do some stuff. It's been one year since my double bypass surgery, and I still ain't 100%. But I ain't dead, and we've got a whole world to go explore. Raven Jake is on the "I'm in if it's free" plan, which is all about my budget and not the value of the experience.

Case in point: it's been a few years since I've been to the Autry. And that's a shame. 'cause they've got some great stuff goin' on. Their big exhibit right now isEmpire and Liberty: the Civil War and the West, but Kim Stringfellow's photo exhibition on Jackrabbit Homesteads taken in the Morongo Valley is also terrific and I was especially drawn to The Balance of Power on the American Frontier, which is largely about the weapons of the historic Old West. And, of course, many of their exhibits explore the boundaries of the perception of the American West and the reality of the American West, exemplified by their emphasis on movie westerns, now including The Lone Ranger.

The Autry is developing into a terrific museum and well worth the $10 fee but, in fitting with the Raven Jake Austerity Plan, it is free to the public every second Tuesday of the month.